Verizon joins the rest of the world, will give you up to $650 if you switch from another carrier

As of Monday, Verizon has become the next U.S. wireless carrier to incentivize people to switch. Verizon announced that it will pay up to $650 per line if you switch away from AT&T, T-Mobile, or Sprint. In a company blog post, Verizon said that they "will buy out your contract and cover early termination fees and device or lease buyouts from your old wireless provider.”

The deal is similar to promotions offered by other carriers for the past few months. If you trade in your current smartphone and buy a new one on Verizon’s device payment plan, you’ll get “up to $650 on a prepaid card” (minus your device’s trade-in value) to pay for the remaining installment payments owed on the other carrier. Plus, if you’re on a contract, you can get “up to $350” on a prepaid card (minus the trade-in value) to cover any early termination fees you might face for switching to Verizon.

As other carriers have made it the norm to offer perks for people switching networks, maybe Verizon has realized that it isn’t enough to go on and on about their performance and reliability.